At a recent grower meeting in Omarama, Mr Brakenridge and NZM staff outlined progress on a government-backed strategy, called the New Zealand Sheep Industry Transformation.
It was developed in response to increasing pressures from competing land use and competitive threats from around the world, including from other fibre producers and the synthetic market.
The company was trying to get the sheep industry back to being a mainstay of the New Zealand economy. Gaining Primary Growth Partnership Fund (PGP) support, had enabled a much bigger budget to be applied to the marketing of fine-wool fibre, Mr Brakenridge said.
Marketing manager Gretchen Foster said the company had some great partners and it was all about how to make them more successful, while growing its sales with them through contracts, and also emerging markets.
The active outdoors market (about 18-24 micron) was one that was only going to grow, Mrs Foster said.
The value of sales of wool in the outdoor retail market had grown from about $US80 million in 2003 to about $US280 million in 2011 and there was a ''huge portion'' of New Zealand's fine-wool clip going to that market.
It was important NZM maintained that business as there was ''plenty of the wool in the world for them''.
But NZM was hand-selecting the best-quality fibre, something the customers loved, and they were ''hooked'' on the consistency and quality. It was also feeding through marketing and creative ideas all the time, it had the ZQ brand and it was undertaking innovation and research projects.
NZM commercial manager Craig Adams said the political and economic turmoil in greater Europe made it a difficult environment.
Brand partners like Reda and Loro Piana had protected themselves by diversifying into other markets such as the United States and China.
As the European market was slowing down, the likes of China and India were ''picking up on the slack''.
Giving an update on Alpine Origin Merino, the joint-venture meat brand between Silver Fern Farms and NZM, business manager Wayne Cameron said success to date had been ''very promising''.
Since its launch 18 months ago, the response from chefs had been ''fantastic'' with more than 130 restaurants now participating.
On the leather side, NZM was in partnership with New Zealand Light Leathers and doing a range of trials while working with Ngai Tahu on the brand.
A range would be taken to a leather international trade fair in Bologne in April, and some leading brands had been invited to view the range and provide feedback, business development manager Nick Aubrey said.
A lot of work was being done on various production science initiatives, led by geneticist Dr Mark Ferguson.
In genetics, there were four project areas being worked on - EBVs, central progeny site, nucleus flock and sire genotyping.
With EBVs, Dr Ferguson said there was ''massive potential'' in New Zealand's fine-wool flock ''to do a lot of things we need to, to satisfy our brand partners''.